So I went from going to Orycon to shopping on Fri night and Saturday, taking Elizabeth to a massage therapist as a gift for her writing a novel, to finding out I really wanted a Nintendo Wii and sitting in line at the local Fred Meyer for 8 hours to drop $409 on one, extra controllers, 2games.
This thing is SO COOL I even spent $10 when I got home on Wiibucks and bought the original Zelda for $5. It downloaded in 2 seconds over FIOS.
The long and short?
The wiiMote rocks. Score 20 out of 10. I was sweating after doing all of the wiiSports training, especially tennis and baseball. Hitting 30 balls back to back is tiring!
Zelda, “the” game I got for $50, is ok. But the graphics are kinda crappy. I mean they’re ok but because I only have the composite cable and its going through my poorly converged composite input and then my TV has a crappy upscaler, you get a lot of jaggies and stuff in the distance is hard to make out. Maybe this will get better when I can find the component cable and go 480P?
But setup was a breeze. The wii has wi-fi so it found my network and I entered my password. Buzz! Error. Hmm, so I went to the support page and it said WPA2. Hmm. Oh, I see, a blue right arrow, click that. Oh, not WEP, choose WPA2. Ok. Bingo.
It immediately downloaded two updates and reset. Nice.
I made a Mii, which is a cartoon character of yourself. Now my Mii plays the sports games etc. I also told my Muu, whom I named “Stiive,” to travel. This means he will wander to other peopel’s Wiis, and theirs will come to mine. Then I can have a parade!
I can’t use the photo stuff because none of my cameras are SD. Too bad the bluetooth the use for the wiiMotes won’t pair with my phone or Mac!
So Wii gets a 9 out of 10. If it had 1080i graphics, it would be 15 out of 10.
The controller is seriously the coolest thing I have seen from a company since the iPod. Everyone I know has to come over and play with this thing, even you Charles and Janet 🙂 You see its wireless bluetooth and can sense you moving it, aiming it, etc. So you putt, bowl, punch, steer, all in mid-air. You actually have to stand up and get some exercise for some games lol.
The boxing was the most confusing. “Punching” didn’t seem to work, but moving the controllers up or down did, and side to side. Need more practice.
I picked up a party game which I call Monkey Ballz. I dunno, people said it was fun.
The line was fun, met some nice people, only lost 5 slots due to people letting their friends show up late, but Freddies clamped down on that once they heard it was going on. The sale at midnight went very smoothly. Kudos to Freddies.
Around 9:30 or so, this dude walks up and says “hey” I’m lookin’ at him, going hmm, I’m freezing, but I know this guy. Dad? No! It was moondog, from #macintosh on IRC. Have known him what, 2 years, but never met him. He lives down the state about 30 mins. He came up cuz barry said I was being a fool waiting in the cold heh. Weirdest part was it didn’t click who he was until I added a Mac OS X window frame around his head, cuz I’d only seen him on webcam. ROFL. Was nice to meet you, moon!
So I go to McD’s after I get my goods, I’m hungry you know. The one across the street was closed, so I went entirely the opposite direction to get some food. I’m officially old – I got food before gaming.
Anyway, I get home and turn on my system with the Harmony before I connected the Wii and my tv won’t come on. Three blinking lights. Shit! Matt helps me track it down – Bad power supply or convergence IC. Shit! Oh well. Then he finds if you unplug the Toshiba TW56X81 for 5 mins, it might reset. Yay! It did. This is the first time the TV has ever done this, so it might be on the “blink” har har. Wonder if it comes on this am. I have not gotten out of bed yet 🙂
The entirely best part of the 8 hour ordeal? My girlfriend, the wonderful Elizabeth, showed up with her friend Erin around 10 something. They had gone to a concert (had free tiks, so why I didn’t go. Those free tiks cost me $419!!! haha) and came by to see how I was doing and Elizabeth warmed me up in as safe-for-public manner as she could. 🙂 How cool is that, to have someone drive by on the way home to make sure you are ok? She rocks, really rocks.
Good day it was 🙂
ok ok, you may have just convinced me to go get one. I have been debating it since Gears of War on the 360 is just fantastic, but the bowling game sounds awesome. If the controller works as well as you say it should be a lot of fun. Could wii bowl against each other over the network then?
Burl
Not with the wiiSports games. They are kinda toss ins meant to sell Wiis to your friends.
I am sure “real” games will support networking. But baseball you jsut hit and pitch, the game does the running and fielding, etc. However to get 5 sports games in the box is a huge kudo to Nintendo.
Now for that light sabre attachment to ship 🙂
oh I forgot to mention, when bowling, you can put extra spin on the ball by twisting your wrist. So in training you have to hook the ball around obstacles and still hit the pins heh.